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Help Stolen Bicycle!

And around and around we go. NEVER leave a "good" bike unattended, locked or otherwise. Ride your beater to the station, to work (unless you can stash it in your office) and for shopping. ALWAYS keep your good one(s) on a very short leash.
 
I am in Fukuoka too. Will keep my eyes open. Don't recall seeing any PlanetX bikes on the roads here.
 
Hope you all don't mind me asking a question on topic here. I've only recently moved to Tokyo and am looking for a commuter bike that I would lock up on university campus, maybe 2-5 hours a day. I was looking to spend 70-100k on a used road bike, but having seen many bikes left outside without any locks, I just assumed bike theft wasn't a real problem here. I don't know how much the OP's bike is worth, but now I'm wondering if I should get a 10k grocery bike instead?
 
Hope you all don't mind me asking a question on topic here. I've only recently moved to Tokyo and am looking for a commuter bike that I would lock up on university campus, maybe 2-5 hours a day. I was looking to spend 70-100k on a used road bike, but having seen many bikes left outside without any locks, I just assumed bike theft wasn't a real problem here. I don't know how much the OP's bike is worth, but now I'm wondering if I should get a 10k grocery bike instead?
If its just to commute to school..... YES!
 
I've only recently moved to Tokyo and am looking for a commuter bike that I would lock up on university campus, maybe 2-5 hours a day. I was looking to spend 70-100k on a used road bike, but having seen many bikes left outside without any locks, I just assumed bike theft wasn't a real problem here. I don't know how much the OP's bike is worth, but now I'm wondering if I should get a 10k grocery bike instead?

If you enjoy riding grocery bikes, YES!

If (like me) you don't, no.

I enjoy riding my own commuting bike (a mid-80s Miyata frankenbike, total price within 45k). I don't enjoy riding step-throughs. My frankenbike has downtube shifters and old-fashioned rims. It doesn't shout any brand name aside from "LeMANS", and certainly none that most people will have heard of. It isn't shiny and doesn't look new. Almost nobody will want it for himself; nobody will delude himself that any part of it can be resold; nobody will want it just in order to ride home on. When it's parked on a university campus (which is often, and normally for a lot longer than two hours), it's parked together with lots of easy-to-understand mamacharis, "cross bikes" and so on, and also with a handful of bikes that are more or less of its own genre but twenty or thirty years newer and emblazoned with familiar, widely advertised brand names ("Giant", "Cannondale", etc). I lock its rear wheel onto the parking frame via either a chain or a cable.

A 50cm long bolt cutters (available at all good hardwear stores)will go through that lock and chain in seconds.

Of course. And given a few more seconds, a simple hacksaw would do the job. But I make sure that the chain/cable looks (and is) more than averagely strong for that parking area. (This is easy to do. My fellow bike-parkers tend to think that anything requiring secateurs rather than mere scissors is sufficient.)

One day my bike may be stolen. This would give me the sads. But I wouldn't regret having bought it, and I'd buy something similar to replace it.

What worries me more is the front QR skewer. I check it every time I retrieve the bike from that parking place (and checking it means tentatively tugging the lever, not just checking that it's pointing in the right direction). One time it clearly had been tampered with.
 
I was looking to spend 70-100k on a used road bike, but [...] I'm wondering if I should get a 10k grocery bike instead?
I'd say don't take anything out of your apartment that you cannot afford to have stolen. Compared to almost any other city in the world, your bike is most unlikely to be stolen - that's why a stolen bike makes the 'news' here. It does happen, though. There are some opportunist thieves, but also some gangs of professional bike thieves.
 
Hope you all don't mind me asking a question on topic here. I've only recently moved to Tokyo and am looking for a commuter bike that I would lock up on university campus, maybe 2-5 hours a day. I was looking to spend 70-100k on a used road bike, but having seen many bikes left outside without any locks, I just assumed bike theft wasn't a real problem here. I don't know how much the OP's bike is worth, but now I'm wondering if I should get a 10k grocery bike instead?
Since I too commute to a university via bicycle I can at least provide a relevant perspective. Our campus is basically a huge square, with bike parking lots at each of the four corners. Anywhere from 200 to 400 bikes are regularly parked in each of these spaces. About 1 to 2% have recognized manufacturer's brand names (Giant, Garneau, Masi, etc.) the rest are cheapo commuter bikes. Most are locked or course, but often not locked to anything stationary. Because the campus is so large, some of the most easily accessible bikes are stolen just to take the thief from one corner of the campus to another. However, once stolen, these are rarely found (just too much space to cover). So, at the end of every semester, for whatever reason, including relocation through stealing, each parking lot has a large number of abandoned bikes, which are then carted off and dumped. I usually grab one or two and give them to a local school that needs them. Very few bikes over a value of Y100,000 are ever parked in these lots. I carry my own bike up 3 flights of stairs to my office--I would NEVER leave it parked, even bolted to a lamppost, in one of the assigned lots, nor would I buy a beater just to use for the commute, unless I lived fairly close (I don't).
 
Thanks. I moved here from San Francisco, which is probably up there in terms of bike thefts. Do wheels alone here get stolen often?

I won't be able to park indoors on campus, but I don't want to settle for a generic bike either. I think I will aim for ¥40-50k rather than my original ¥70-100k.
 
I'm not sure what to make of this; but as long as people believe that a bike costing well under 100,000 yen is merely a "beater", all to the good! This way, there'll be no interest in my commuting bike (all Suntour, Sugino, Dia-compe, Nitto, Mavic, Araya, Scott, unknown [hubs] and even Shimano [a lone QR skewer] equipped). A bike that I can't be bothered to carry up all the flights of steps to my own office, that also lives outside when it's at home, and that FWIW still looks better to me than does a bike with a "stainless" frame.
 
Maybe someone should import this:

yep.jpg


You know, cover the decals, and so on.
 
"Do wheels alone here get stolen often?"

At the university, at least, it is less conspicuous to simply steal a whole bike then a set of wheels--as someone would have to remove the wheels while the bike is in the lot, usually at least a few persons in near vicinity, and then carry those wheels off, across large open spaces, to their car or elsewhere. Never have seen a stripped bike in the lots before.

On my definition of a "beater": Basically any bike that you would not look twice at if you saw it parked in a lot, or wouldn't think twice about if it were stolen.
 
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